I read an article recently about people “opting out” (i.e.. giving up) of dating on Simone Grant’s blog, and it really made me kind of think about myself and how I just really can’t identify with the experience of ever having a desire to give up on anything, let alone something as important as one’s love life. I see people do it all the time, but it’s just something that I don’t understand intellectually. It’s just my personality and how I was raised. A million things can go wrong in my life but I still believe with every ounce of my being that I deserve happiness and if I work at it eventually I’ll get it right.

It’s so incredible to me how many parallels there are between entrepreneurship/business/sales and dating. Most of the most successful people in the world aren’t successful because they got lucky the first time around; they’re successful because every time they failed they viewed it as one more idea that didn’t work bringing them a step closer to an idea that would.

People talk about how Thomas Edison tried thousands of failed designs when he was trying to invent the light bulb before he finally created one that worked, or even how long actors and musicians pound the pavement trying to get a break before they hit it big. The constant is always that these people believe that they DESERVE the success that is around the corner for them and it’s never about the goal, but rather about enjoying the journey, and knowing that the more difficult the road the better it will feel when you arrive at your destination.

There are definitely two distinct types of people in the world when it comes to goal setting and ambition. There’s the person who reads a book like “The 4 Hour Work Week” by Tim Ferriss and thinks it’s a cute story but is not replicable for them or anyone else (this is the feeling that I got when I read the Dateable Dork’s blog post on pondering her road ahead), then there’s the person who reads that book and feels like he just got slapped across the face by the voice of reason. He realizes that his life fell off track somewhere along the way and it’s about time that he get his shit together. What’s funny about it is that a lot of the people who think that way about career ambitions often think the opposite way about their love life.

I’m sure that many of you have heard all of this stuff before and for most of you it will not resonate, but for someone like me, this is how I think, and that’s the difference between successful people and everyone else. It’s the difference talked about in “Rich Dad, Poor Dad.” Call it delusional, call it idealistic, say it’s because I’m young and haven’t been beaten down by the world yet, but fuck you! I am delusional, I live in my own reality, but you know what? By believing it, it becomes true. One of my favorite t-shirts I own is a shirt from Reflect Ts that says “I create my reality” on it backwards so that I can read it to myself in a mirror. Maybe some of you need to think back to who you were at the age of 23 and imagine what that version of yourself would say about the current one.